


River of Heaven

by slaydel_connix



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Tanabata
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23022469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slaydel_connix/pseuds/slaydel_connix
Summary: One night.  That was all they were given.  It was never enough, but it was everything all the same.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 8
Kudos: 41
Collections: Reylo Theme Event





	River of Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> Notes:
> 
> CW: for brief mention of suicidal ideation. 
> 
> I take wild liberties with Star Wars lore. Credit goes entirely to diasterisms for inspiration regarding a wellspring of the living Force, yoinked directly from the fabulous landscape with a blur of conquerors , which if you have not read you absolutely must. 
> 
> Written for the Reylo Writing Den's Fairytale Theme Event. Loosely based on the Japanese folktale behind Tanabata which is the tale of star-crossed lovers Orihime and Hikoboshi, who angered the gods and are now fated to only ever meet once a year, on July 7th, and even then only if the sky is clear. For more information about Tanabata, see  this Wikipedia page.

Rey frowned and knitted her brow, using the Force to tuck a stray strand of her sweat-soaked hair back into place. A fresh trickle of perspiration rolled down the bridge of her nose at the movement. She fought the urge to sigh with frustration, meditative concentration officially broken. She would never get used to the humidity here on Dathomir. Jakku's heat had been brutal; harsh, all-consuming, and deadly. She'd witnessed many foolhardy travelers meet their end on the unforgiving desert planet growing up, yet she would have welcomed it's familiar dry heat at this very moment. Rey was a creature of the desert; the inescapable syrupy stickiness of the jungle around her was oppressive and left her feeling as though every breath was hard won, heavy and tortuous.

The soft sounds of life hummed in the background. In her mind's eye, Rey could see the faint glittering threads of the living Force all around her, growing brighter as the blood-stained daylight waned. A flare of anticipation sparked through her veins at the sight. _Soon_. A whisper, nothing more. Not yet.

_I know_ , she sent back, the bond they shared singing with joy, stronger now. She was giddy with excitement now, practically vibrating with it. With a sigh, she gave up the ghost, opening her eyes and unfolding her legs to gently touch down from where she'd been floating. The movement was effortless, the Force flowing so strongly around her now that the night was so near.

She had discovered it by accident; well, as much of an accident as the Force allowed for a being such as herself, which was to say not much. Rey had been poring over the original Jedi texts for what felt like the thousandth time, her grief and pain held back by the tenuous thread of her exhaustive research as she wandered aimlessly from system to system, C-3P0 and R2 her only companions.

After Exogol she had honestly tried to join her friends as they worked to nurture the nascent framework of a new Galactic Republic. Poe had truly come into his own as a leader, Leia's influence shining through as he skillfully navigated the diplomatic nightmare of setting up a new government in the wake of a costly and devastating war. Finn had wholeheartedly thrown himself into the arduous task of overseeing the new stormtrooper rehabilitation program, Jannah at his side. Rose, with her steely determination and unwavering calm, set herself to the grim task of overseeing the efforts to abolish slavery and child labor. They had all found their purpose. 

A small part of her resented them for it. For leaving her behind, because try as she might, she never felt anything besides a yawning, aching emptiness. After months of struggling to find her place, she couldn't bear it anymore and had said her goodbyes and fled Coruscant on the Millenium Falcon. _Yours now_ Chewie had rumbled sadly as he boarded a transport to Kashyyyk shortly after the last battle. She thought she had found her purpose in Ben, but that hope had withered and turned to ash inside of her.

Ben was _dead_ , he was gone and he was never coming back, and he didn't even have the decency to appear as a Force ghost, the no-good, lying son of a bantha. He had left her just like everyone else in her life. She had only just found him again, found herself again. A dyad. Half of a whole. For a few glorious moments she had felt truly, completely herself before having it ripped away from her, just like everything else good and beautiful in her life. 

Finn and Rose and BB-8 (and on rare occasions Poe) had all been a comforting balm for her raw and aching heart, at first. Her first real friends, her found family. But they couldn't understand. They tried, but how do you explain something so intense, so singular, so life-alteringly profound? How do you reconcile the monster they had feared with the man she had loved? 

Rey has always been gifted with languages. A byproduct of her extreme sensitivity to the Force, Luke's disembodied voice had unhelpfully informed her during one such frenzied, desperate study sessions. She could converse easily in dozens of tongues, yet all words seemed to fall short of properly conveying the incredible sense of rightness, of belonging, of home she had felt as she clung to Ben's wide frame, lips pressed against his in an exultant embrace. 

Rey had subsisted on poly-starch and veg-meat for her entire living memory before she left Jakku. The first time she had tasted fresh fruit, a perfectly ripe jogan fruit Leia had plied her with before she jetted off on her ill-fated mission to bring Luke back to the Resistance, she had teared up. The taste had been so sharp, so clear and bright in her mouth that it had physically hurt. Her mouth had ached from the intensity of the flavor bursting across her tongue, but she couldn't stop eating it, and she knew then that as long as she lived, she would never forget the sweet-tart taste of the fruit that day in Leia's dingy, cramped office on D'Qar. It was like that. After a lifetime of merely surviving, she was finally living.

To have that one moment and then to have it ripped away from her the next was a breathtaking cruelty. So she had done what she'd always done when faced with the cold brutality life threw at her: she put herself to work. The problem was Ben was gone and that was frankly unacceptable. So Rey set her mind to the task of finding a solution. 

Lacking any other direction, and despite numerous combative and loud conversations with her former master, she had settled on the ancient lore of the Jedi _and_ the Sith. Her scavenger roots had proved useful to her as she had combed through what remained of her grandfather's property on Naboo to find coordinates of his many caches of Sith artifacts and texts. If _he_ had somehow managed to preserve his moldering essence long enough to occupy a cloned body, she could damn sure find a way to have Ben.

The original Jedi texts had been as dull and impenetrable as Luke had warned her. Using them to find the way to Exogol had been an excruciating ordeal. Written in a hodge-podge of languages, most of them unfamiliar to her, and full of the kind of nonsensical philosophical ramblings she'd come to expect from the ancient religious order. To her dismay, what she had been able to recover of Sith texts were not much better, although the mentions of overt violence, bloodlust, and conquest peppered throughout added a small break from the monotony the Jedi texts had been lacking. She had conscripted C-3P0 as a translator/research drone, cutting his protests short with a look so severe he had not dared to complain since. 

Bit by bit, the words were revealed to her. Mostly ramblings about power and the dangers of succumbing to the light. She spent some time engrossed in reading a journal, one of the few interesting reads, before realizing with an unpleasant lurching sensation that it had belonged to Darth Vader. _Anakin Skywalker_ she corrected herself. Ben's grandfather. This must have been shortly after his fall. He still spoke about her. Padmé Amidala Naberrie. Intrigued, she had searched the holonet for an image of the late senator and queen and had been surprised to find a woman barely older than herself. _Beautiful_ Rey thought wistfully, taking in her elegant bearing and delicate features. She could see the ghost of Leia in the way she held her head, that familiar spark of defiance in her dark eyes. _Ben's eyes._

She had been surprised by Padmé's appearance, but Anakin Skywalker's had shocked her to her core. As striking as his wife had been, tall and lithe. Built for agility and speed rather than the brutal efficiency of his grandson. Her heart had clenched painfully as she traced a finger over the glowing image, following a scar down his handsome face. Ben was here, too. In the width of his shoulders, the stubborn set of his jaw. The plush lips and the annoyingly perfect fall of dark, soft-looking hair.

His smile had been all Han Solo, she discovered. She had wept freely upon finding a Holo of Leia and Han's wedding among the effects Leia had left to her. The way he had looked at her in his last moments was burned into her memory like a brand, and here it was again, in the face of his father. Every second of her time that wasn't dedicated to her search of a way to Ben was now reserved for this. Finding and hoarding pieces of him as greedily as a Hutt.

Leia had come to her that first night. Anakin's unsmiling face shifting in her memory, intermingling with Ben's until her head spun. Rey had sobbed brokenly, begging Leia to make him speak to her. 

_I can't, Rey_ , Leia had responded sadly.

That was the first night she broke into Han's secret stash of Corellian Brandy. It wasn't the last. With each passing day she grew more desperate. She started ignoring increasingly frantic comms from Finn and Rose. She barely ate. She had begun idly thinking about floating out the airlock when it happened.

_Rey_ ….

Every cell in her body lit up at once. She clumsily jumped to her feet, carelessly knocking a stack of ancient scrolls and books to the ground in her haste.

"Ben!" Her eyes scanned the small room frantically, but all she could see was durasteel. Their bond felt raw, almost painful, but she treasured the sensation, hot tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. 

_Rey…. You can't…._

Indignant rage bloomed instantly in her breast. "Don't you dare tell me what I can or can't do! You _left_ me!" Her voice broke, throat constricting painfully around her accusation. "You swore I'd never be alone, but now I am and it's your fault and I just can't anymore!"

Her face felt hot, like she'd been sitting in front of a fire. Her eyes burned, and her breaths were ragged and gasping.

_Rey, I'll always be with you, but you deserve to move on. To have a life, love, a family. With someone better than me._

The idea was so abhorrent that she flinched. The familiar sting of rejection flared bright in her chest for a moment, and she deliberately allowed it to flow across the bond, taking a grim satisfaction in the answering spike of sorrow she felt from him. 

_Sweetheart…._ The endearment cut through her like a blade and just as suddenly as it had come the anger was gone.

"Ben, I can't do this anymore. I miss you too much. All I want is to be with you and I can't. I'm just so tired." She was, too. A soul-deep exhaustion that left her feeling weak and empty. 

_Rey… I want that, too. More than anything. But this is the only way I can be with you now._

At the resignation in his tone, she choked down a sob, collapsing on the cold, hard floor of the captains quarters.

"Ben, I'm so afraid. Afraid I'll forget how your voice sounds. How you smell, how you taste, how you feel. That I'll forget your face. There are no images of you as an adult anywhere, not without that _kriffing_ mask. Will you not show me your face at least? Please, Ben." Rey hated how broken she sounded. She was made of sterner stuff than that, but confronted with this, with _him_ , she was unmade, agony and despair made flesh.

She heard him sigh and felt his reluctant agreement flit across their bond before he appeared before her, bathed in the ethereal flow of the Force. A gasp, hers, she realized belatedly and before she could stop herself she reached a hand out to caress his face. She was devastated when it passes through his cheek, unable to stop herself from releasing a small, plaintive cry at the loss. 

He was as beautiful as she remembered. A solemn face, with those dark eyes and lush, expressive mouth. Strong jaw, aquiline nose, a dark halo of hair that framed his beloved features perfectly. 

She was weeping openly, unashamed, and smiling for the first time in months. He was _here_ . She could _see_ him. His eyes were full of emotion, a bittersweet smile on his lips. Rey would have given every last ounce of herself to kiss them, to see if they were as soft and warm as she remembers. But she couldn't. Her desperate smile fell. She couldn't kiss him. She couldn't hold him. She couldn't invite him to her bed, give him the dark haired children with their father's crooked smile and their mother's freckles she had seen in that vision once upon a time. Not now, not ever again. This was all she'd ever have.

Panic flooded her system. _He's going to leave me again_. She lurched forward, her hand carelessly crumpling a parchment that was likely centuries old in her frantic need to be closer to him. But Ben's eyes had shifted and he was now staring intently at the parchment. 

"Ben?" Rey wanted him to look at _her,_ not some useless scrap of nonsensical Sth rantings.

_Where did you get that?_ His voice, disembodied as it was, reverberated in her mind. He sounded almost like he had when they first met. Like Kylo Ren. Single-minded and focused.

She looked down with a frown. It's a piece of writing from some ancient Sith, his name having escaped her. _Revan_ Ben supplied, attention rapt. Rough sketches of a temple, a lake and some distant figures mixed with his feverish writings. He was discussing local folk-lore of a certain clan on the planet Dathomir. Some sacred ritual observed by a small group of Nightsisters on the eve of the vernal equinox. A legend about a pair of Force-sensitive star-crossed lovers, lost to each other in death, being reunited once a year, on the vernal equinox at a mystical lake, but only when the stars could be seen to light their way to one another. Their love was so powerful that it opened a gateway between worlds for that one night. 

The Force-witches of Dathomir reportedly felt a stronger connection to the Force during the night, had even been able to "draw on the power of their ancestors" and "commune with their spirits in the Living Force." Revan had theorized it could allow him to tap more deeply into the Dark side, but his next entries had been practically unhinged, speaking of being haunted by visions of someone named Bastila and vowing to never again return. It had all sounded a bit laser-brained to her.

"I found it in … _his_ things." She didn't bother to speak his name. The specter of her grandfather loomed regardless. "He had these caches of Sith artifacts and writings hidden away across the Galaxy. I found the coordinates at the remains of his estate on Naboo. It was fairly easy to find for a scavenger."

Ben snorted at that. _I'm sure the locals loved that._

Rey shrugged, unconcerned "It belongs to me, anyway. Only living heir and all that."

_Fair enough_. Even as a Force ghost he managed to sound so much like his father, his observation colored with faint amusement. 

_I recognize those sketches. Rey, that's not just a lake. That's a wellspring of the Living Force. Dathomir has a strong connection to the Force._

"To the Dark Side of the Force, I thought?"

_I'm not even sure there is such a thing anymore. Not as it exists without the influence of Force users._ He managed to sound only slightly bitter. _I saw the murals at Ach-To. In your mind. I think the original Jedi had it right. Light and Dark. It's a balance. They're the same. The Force is a wild, untamable thing. To divide it into Light and Dark… it's so much_ bigger _than that. Bigger than us._

"What does it matter what we call it? It's just the ramblings of a power-hungry lunatic. It doesn't mean anything!" Rey's frustration was evident. This was the first time she'd been able to speak with him, to _be_ with him since Exogol, and in typical Ben fashion he was _ruining_ it with a meaningless philosophical discussion about the nature of the Force. She had finally found the glimmer of his uncle. It was just like Ben to inherit Luke's most infuriating personality traits and still remain frustratingly, impossibly irresistible to her. The wretch. Stars how she loved him. 

Ben huffed out his version of a light chuckle. Rey felt her heart break a little at how much younger he looked. _It matters because the Force is so strong there, especially during the vernal equinox. New life, new energy, enhanced by the light of the stars? I think that maybe there's more to those stories than local legends. I think… I think you should go there._ We _should go there._

Rey's heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest. "What are you saying Ben?" She hardly dared to breathe. 

_Rey… I think...I think I could maybe manifest._

She had, mortifyingly enough, tripped on the pile of scrolls in her haste to make it to the nav system, Ben calling after her, a burst of startled pleasure and tenderness shooting through their bond at how eager she had been at the prospect, however faint. She had let out an impressive string of expletives in every language she knew when she checked the date calculations on Dathomir. 61 standard days until the vernal equinox, kark it all to hell. 

_It'll be alright, sweetheart. We have time now._

"I swear on every god on every planet in this Galaxy that I will March into the afterlife and throttle you myself if you decide to exile yourself from me again." Rey had practically snarled at him, features twisted in grief and frustration.

_Yeah, that was… in retrospect not my finest moment._ He had the grace to look at least somewhat sheepish. _It felt like too much to hope for that you would have felt the same about me. I just wanted you to have a life. You deserve so much more than I can give you._

"Good thing you don't get to decide what I deserve then. I mean it, no more disappearing on me. I won't be held responsible for my actions."

A full-fledged laugh this time. _Yes ma'am._

He wasn't always there after that. He communed with his mother and uncle, and occasionally even his grandfather. Evidently Anakin approved of her. _You remind him of her. Padmé._ Ben had told her after one such visit. 

Rey snorted at that. "Was it my many and varied scars, my scavenger's tan, or my atrocious table manners? Your grandmother was a _queen_ and she looked like one. I'm just a nobody." 

_Rey…. I grew up around queens and empresses and noblewomen. You're still the most beautiful woman I've ever seen_. 

She had felt her face grow hot and her pulse thundered in her ears at the absolute certainty in his eyes and the honesty she could feel from their bond. A warm rush of pleasure at the knowledge that he found her just as alluring as she found him. 

Her meals, reduced in recent months to nothing more than the necessary consumption of nutrients, became treasured memories. Conversations about anything and everything. She told him about her life on Jakku, and he listened without pity or judgment. In return he told her of his childhood growing up as the son of galactic heroes. _It wasn't all bad_ . _They genuinely loved me. Now that I'm not clouded by Snok - Palpatine's influence, I can see that now._ He sounded wistful.

"I don't think I can ever forgive my parents for what they did. I know they thought they were protecting me, but I grew up with no one because of it." Ben just nods softly. 

_I understand. My mother never told me about my grandfather. I had to find out about it when it spread on the holonet. I'm still working on forgiving her for that._

"I'm so sorry, Ben. That must have been so hard."

_It was. But I see now that she was trying to protect me, too, in her own way. Our parents did what they thought was best, but that doesn't mean we weren't hurt by their choices_. 

"Emotionally well-adjusted Ben Solo? Will wonders never cease?" Her teasing earns her another crooked grin.

_I'm full of surprises, sweetheart._

She finally answered the comms from Finn and Rose, to their relief.

She was living again. Every day brought her closer to the moment she could maybe hold Ben again, the way she'd held him in those blissful moments on Exogol. 

When the day finally arrived she had been practically vibrating out of her skin as she set the Falcon down in a clearing near the temple from the sketch, in a much sorrier state now, stone columns lying in ruins around the eerily still lake. Rey clambered over a fallen statue covered in vines to get a closer look. The lake had a strange quality to it. It didn't even look like water, more like a liquid mirror. She dipped a hand in and shuddered when she realized the temperature was exactly the same as the surrounding air. She jerked her hand back with a house of disgust.

"This place gives me the creeps" she complained. 

_It's a deserted temple of the nightsisters in the middle of the jungle on Dathomir. Were you expecting a resort on Iloh?_

"Glad to see that good old Solo sarcasm is still alive and well." Rey relished the expression of faux indignation that remark earned her.

_I won't dignify that with a response._ He sniffed, every inch the aristocratic senator's son. 

Rey giggled at that, which was his intention all along. "So what do I do? Is there an incantation or something? A lever I pull?"

_It's the Force, it's not witchcraft._ He snorted. _There's about 5 hours 'til sundown. I think we should meditate until then._

"Ugh, of course you do. My connection to the Force feels… itchy almost? Unsettled. Maybe meditation will help."

_It can't hurt._

Which led her to now. The crimson sunlight of Dathomir had all but disappeared by now. The stars were out, and their reflection in the lake created the illusion that she was standing among them. A river of stars.

She is lost for a moment, so transfixed by the beauty that she doesn't feel the sudden presence behind her.

"Rey." He says her name with such tenderness that it sounds like a prayer. Her eyes flood with tears and she is suddenly struck motionless. She can't bear to turn around and see him bathed in the light of the Force, that familiar otherworldly quality that means he's not really there. 

A touch. His hand, warm and alive and real, brushes a stray lock of her hair back from the nape of her neck. The bond sings. _Home. You are home_. 

She turns around, her face breaking out into a joyous smile, her heart leaping in her chest. 

"Ben."


End file.
